Blood and Jack Daniels
by pretend-to-care
Summary: Following his dishonorable discharge and prison stint, Merle comes back into town. Daryl, now twenty or so, hasn't seen him for eight years. The reunion is far from happy. Oneshot. Rated T for fisticuffs.


Main Street was predominately dark and silent when Daryl Dixon's pickup truck rattled into town. Static hissing from the radio, punctuated by bursts of disjointed Johnny Cash, went unnoticed by the disheveled young man, whose eyes were locked on the yellow haze emanating from the bar at the far end of the street.

One hand had the wheel in a vise grip, knuckles the color of a sunbleached spine. The other rested on the handle of his hunting knife. He was unconsciously fondling the hilt, grinding his teeth in time with the movement of his thumb. His blood was running simultaneously hot and cold, heart pounding like a war drum, senses heightened with the elevated awareness of a hunter. His prey was in that bar, probably on the center stool, working on his third Jack Daniels and telling the joke about the blonde and the raccoon.

Sure enough, there it was, parked on the corner—the bike. He had traded his old beater for a brand-new Triumph, it looked like. Customized. Expensive. Daryl's lip curled.

He swung his pickup into an empty space on the curb down the street. The bar was packed tonight. Daryl stepped out of the truck and stomped up the walk, striding past the front door to the bike on the corner. With a grunt, his foot connected with the body of the bike and he tipped it bodily onto its side with an unhealthy crash. One of the mirrors smashed, and something structural in the handlebars snapped, to his satisfaction. Then he turned on his heel and burst through the door, a name ripping out of his throat like the bellow of a bear.

"_Merle_!"

The man on the center stool leaned back out of the lineup as every eye turned to see the Dixon boy come storming in. From behind the mouth of his bottle, Merle's thin lips rose in a smirk. He took another swallow, then set the bottle on the counter and grinned, rivulets of whiskey dripping through the sparse, already graying whiskers on his chin.

"Well, lookie who it is, my own little brother."

"Don't gimme that crap," Daryl snarled. "I ain't your little nothin'. What you doin' back here, Merle?"

"What you doin' in a bar on a weekday? You ain't old enough to drink."

"Don't pretend you know how old I am, like you been here this whole time."

"Them birthday cards I sent musta got lost in the mail." Merle chuckled and raised the bottle to his lips again.

Daryl lashed out and knocked the bottle from his hand. It smashed on the floor with a spectacular explosion of glass and whiskey. Merle looked shocked for only an instant before rising to his feet with the conviction of an angry drunk.

"I was drinkin' that, little brother."

"Yeah? Why don't you drink it now? Lap it up like a dog, you stupid—"

Merle scowled and swung at Daryl's face, but Daryl ducked and shoved his staggering brother back.

"You got no right comin' back here, Merle! There ain't nothin' for you here!"

Merle lurched forward, spewing profanities, but Daryl was having none of it. He caught his elder brother in the jaw with a well-timed uppercut, then caught his shirt and yanked him back only to shove him into a nearby table. "You don't belong here no more! Get out!"

Snarling, Merle staggered to his feet and came at his brother. Daryl aimed another blow, but Merle took hold of his fist and wrenched him to the side, boxing him on the ear.

"Don't you mouth off at me, boy!" He kicked the back of Daryl's knee and he buckled. The minute he hit the floor Merle was all over him. "You pansy little punk, your brother heads off for one minute and you think you the big man? You think you a big man, baby brother?" Blood flew from Daryl's nose as Merle cuffed his face again and again. "You ain't nothin'! You ain't nothin' but a little scumsucker, you good-for-nothin'—"

With a guttural roar, Daryl drove his knees into Merle's stomach and threw him off. "_One minute_? You was gone for one minute? You was gone for _eight years_! You was off gettin' laid and boozin' it up for eight years while I sat here with my own daddy poundin' my face against the floor!" His knuckles were split, Merle's lip was in three pieces, the other patrons were yelling, but his arm wouldn't stop. "You cleaned us out, you rode off into the sunset like some bigshot, you come back here and what you think you're gonna get? What you want, Merle, a parade? You want us to drop everything and come lick the mud off them military boots?" He felt for his knife. "You ain't worth _nothin'_, you hear me? You ain't worth _nothin'_, you slack-jawed fool son of a—"

Something connected with the side of Daryl's head and the bar exploded into jagged white pieces. The knife went flying and he tumbled off Merle, dazed, conscious of the warm sticky liquid running down his temple into his ear. His vision cleared slowly, while he fought bile rising in his throat, and at last he could see the dizzy figure of Merle, bloody and purple like something out of a nightmare, standing over him pointing a pistol in his face.

"You assaulted a military man, little brother. That's treason," Merle rasped.

Daryl flinched as blood dripped off his brother's lip and landed on his forehead. "You ain't no military man," he growled.

Merle snarled, cocked the gun and bent over Daryl to place the barrel between his eyes. "And you ain't worth the dirt between my toes."

Chest heaving, Daryl searched his brother's face. His eyes were bloodshot, glazed with alcohol, already swelling shut. His hair, always short, had grown out during his prison stint. There was a nick on his brow that hadn't been there when he left home. Beneath the blood and the bruising and the eight years' worth of no contact, Daryl recognized the same reckless fool who had gotten arrested for shooting out streetlights and breaking into the sheriff's office and dealing drugs to the middle school kids.

In his brother's absence, _real_ absence, not the juvenile drifter status Merle had held for so long, Daryl had changed. Under his father's blows, in the solitude of the woods, on long nights when he wandered the streets pretending he had somewhere to go, he had decided he didn't want to be like his big brother. Or his father, or his chain-smoking mother. But Merle? Merle was the same as he had ever been: big mouth, big fists, big temper, no conscience. And Daryl was aware, in the deepest part of his soul, that if Merle had been on his fourth whiskey instead of his third, he would've already pulled the trigger.

He looked up at Merle without saying a word. Seconds passed slowly, piling onto Daryl's twenty long years for all they were worth. Then, finally, Merle reached up with his thumb and uncocked the pistol. He stood up straight and let it fall to his side.

Merle spat to the side. "Get up, little brother." He didn't offer his hand. If he had, Daryl wouldn't have taken it.

He climbed to his feet, gasping as pain surged forward in his head and blood washed down his lips and chin. He drew the back of his hand across his mouth, felt a piece of his tooth on his tongue, almost as sharp as Merle's stare. There was no remorse in those pale, glassy eyes. And with every remaining ounce of strength, Daryl hated the pain that registered at that fact. Perhaps he hadn't changed so much, and the scrawny, unkempt little latchkey kid Merle had left behind was simply buried beneath layer after hardened layer of sheer survival instinct.

Daryl turned and made for the door. He could barely see, and blood bubbled from his nose with every breath. But as he reached the door, and the evening breeze ran its fingers through his long hair, he turned his head ever so slightly and said over his shoulder, "Nice bike, Merle."

He heard his brother swear, heard him deliberating in his mind whether or not it was too late to shoot him. But before he could make that decision, Daryl was gone, out of the bar and back in his pickup. He coaxed the engine to life and roared out of the town in the opposite direction he had come. The decision had been made, and it had been a long time coming.

Merle could do what he wanted. But Daryl wasn't coming back.


End file.
